


If Everything Comes Crashing Down (I Pray That You'll Still Be Around)

by LostintheGarden



Series: She-Ra Apocalypse AU [1]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Adora (She-Ra) Needs a Hug, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bittersweet, Character Death, F/F, I can't write dialogue, Major Character Injury, Mara mention, Mild Gore, Post-Apocalypse, does this count as hurt/comfort, happy-ish ending, implied/referenced PTSD, kind of, kissing your best friend goodnight, light body horror, mention of the other cadets, no lesbians die in this fic, sleeping beauty! perfuma, the heart exploded, the plants took over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25985878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostintheGarden/pseuds/LostintheGarden
Summary: "If everything comes crashing downI pray that you'll still be aroundI'll sing to you to mask the soundOf missiles breaking up the ground."Apocalypse au where the heart of Etheria ruptures, changing all life on the planet forever. After their home is destroyed, Catra and Adora are on the run, avoiding natural disasters and stumbling upon age-old secrets as they navigate love at the end of the world.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Series: She-Ra Apocalypse AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1886029
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	If Everything Comes Crashing Down (I Pray That You'll Still Be Around)

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for the weird punctuation, a result of my attempts to appease Grammarly. I'm not sure if this counts as Graphic Depictions of Violence, but content warning for mentions/references to PTSD, character death, major character injury, mild gore and body horror and (un)natural disasters.

Four moons looked down on Etheria, hanging purple and silver in the humid evening. The other eight were hidden, cloaked in darkness, and too far away in their rotations to be visible from the village of Thaymor. 

Adora crested yet another plush green hill, nudging aside the wildflowers and leaves with her boot as she reached the first house. A single board of wood was leaned against the doorway in lieu of a door (or maybe was all that was left of it).

Adora reached out and grasped the board firmly in her hands. She made to pick it up and move it aside, but instead dropped it almost immediately, shaking her hand with a hiss.

“Ow!!” She turned over her right hand, and plucked out the splinter that had lodged itself between her thumb and forefinger. Cruel and unfair.

She kicked the board (partly to move it more to the side, partly in retaliation) and stepped into the house. 

Her eyes were already scanning the scene before they finished adjusting to the increased dimness. A standard one-room settlement, with four wooden walls, a dirt floor and a thatched hay roof. The middle of the room was a heap of moss and weeds with no other living things. 

Adora bypassed it completely and went for the jars and boxes stacked against one wall. She took a couple of jars in her hand that seemed to be pickled preserves and then went for a small-ish box. It turned out to be a bread box, but in lifting the lid she saw that it hadn't succeeded in its purpose. The whole thing was covered in mold.

She dropped the lid and the pickles with a resounding  _ clap. _ Well, that was frustrating. If the bread had mold, that meant everything else did too and there was nothing she could do about it. So much for scavenging this quadrant. 

They stuck to ration bars and scavenged canned foods, as they’d learned early on not to eat the plants. 

In the beginning, Adora had collected some edible leaves and well-known berries for a meal. She’d eaten two bites, and given the rest to Catra. Before she’d finished the bowl, Catra had collapsed. Her eyes had glowed an unearthly green and her face had contorted, twisting into unsettling mockeries of expression before going still.

Adora had worked for three days to purge the poison from her system. It wasn’t until she heard Catra’s shaky breaths deepen and saw her eyes clear that she succumbed to her own fever.

Catra had lost half her eyebrows and most of her hair. Adora’s had grown unbearably frizzy and crackled like paper. The front stuck up in a small “poof!” above her forehead, that she couldn't smooth no matter how hard she tried. 

“Aww, it’s stuck up, like you!” Catra had said, grinning teasingly. 

“What, like yours is so much better?” Adora said, trying again (unsuccessfully) to smooth down the poof.

“Oh please,” Catra had replied, “I’m practically the lesbian dreamboat! Hey, I wonder if we could find a way to pierce my nose out here…”

It had taken a while to be able to laugh at it, but they never forgot and stuck to scavenged goods and what ration bars they had left from then on. 

Adora stepped carefully again around the moss heap at the center of the room and edged out the door. She’d learned to avoid those too.

Just like the mold, the plants had changed when the heart breached and the magic took over. Both had grown uncontrollably and consumed everything they could with what could only be described as  _ hunger. _ The mold ate whatever wasn’t under lock and key, penetrating glass jars and paper wrappers indiscriminately. The moss turned every home into an empty house, before both slowed to nearly a stop.

About a month in, Adora had dug into a heap of the stuff in another empty house, searching for food. A pair of legs had fallen out, severed at the waist. Perfectly preserved, with a glowing greenish hue. 

She didn’t sleep for five days. Eventually, the hallucinations were worse than what she saw on the backs of her eyelids. Her skin hung heavy on her bones, and her breath had burned against her throat. 

Sometimes, she still woke up in a cold sweat, hearing the _ thud _ of corpses hitting the floor.

There could be anything in there. Clothes, paper, kitchen tables, and people. The moss had taken it all.

She trudged along another hill, measuring the distance to three or four houses away. Thaymor wasn’t very big, barely constituting a village or a borough, much less a town. The grass was so  _ so  _ green it almost glowed, even in the dark, but Adora couldn't appreciate it. Not knowing what it was. And there was the humming.

The plants and trees and even the  _ air  _ all made noise. Nothing was ever quiet. Adora had almost gotten used to it, but a small headache still throbbed at the back of her skull. Her most constant companion, even more so than Catra. 

Then, another noise joined the fray, different. Humming, coming from a  _ person? _ Singing, maybe? Was that what it was called?

Adora followed the noise to her “target”, a house partially built into its own valley. The humming was coming from inside, and instead of being darker,  _ light  _ shone out from behind the curtain door. 

Adora paused at the doorway, then ever so gently lifted the curtain and stepped just inside the threshold.

An elderly person with long spiky gray hair, covered in dust and small sparkles stood assembling something in front of a large brick oven. They were dressed in rich red and pink patterned fabric in a loose, robed style and had a gnarled tree-branch cane leaning beside them.

Adora made the smallest noise possible, then said “Uh, hello?”

The person spun around, and adjusted glasses that magnified their eyes so they were at least three times bigger than normal. “OH, HELLO MARA! IS THAT YOU, MARA DEARIE?”

“O-oh, uhh,” Adora stammered, slightly shell-shocked (it had been five months since she’d met a  _ new person _ ). “I, yes! I mean no, uh, no, um who are you?”

“IT’S MADAME RAZZ SILLY!!” The old woman replied. “So silly you do not remember!” 

“No no, I mean, yes, um—” Adora stuttered out ( _ five months. Five months, in the freaking wilderness!! So what if she didn’t have “people skills”?)  _ She could hear Catra’s voice in her head, laughing.

“Hm. well, you don't seem very sure. I give you a minute to decide! Would you like pie?” 

“Um. No thank you.”

The strange old woman shrugged and dropped…  _ were those metal screws?  _ Into a large mixing bowl, before returning to another bowl filled with berry mixture and smashing the berries with vigor.

Concern ebbed into Adora in small waves, diluting the surprise. 

Gesturing to the bowl of mushy berries, she said “You really shouldn’t be eating those, they’re dangerous.”

“PAH!” Madame Razz continued puttering around the small dwelling, adding some water and a white sandy substance to her mixture. “MADAME RAZZ EATS THOSE BERRIES ALL THE TIME.”

Growing increasingly worried, Adora moved closer to the old woman. “That’s really not a good idea, they can really hurt you. You’ve eaten a lot of them recently? Like, how mu— okay, you know what, I have some medicine back at my camp. I can’t spare very much, but if you wait here I can go get it. Does that sound okay to you?”

“PAH!” Razz said again and shuffled forward (too far inside Adora’s personal bubble for her comfort). She stuck out her tongue very pointedly in Adora’s direction. “YOU SEE?? I’M NOT GOING TO GET SICK FROM A FEW BERRIES!! She turned around, adding “No glowy green eyes for Razz.” 

Adora weighed the options in her head. The elderly lady was certainly still very, ah,  _ spry.  _ And, she realized, feeling a guilty weight settle around her shoulders, she’d really prefer not to share any of their precious medicine if they didn’t  _ have  _ to.

“Ah,” Adora started. The first new person she’d seen in five months. She did seem for the most part physically healthy, but she also didn’t exactly seem well. 

“Are you sure you're doing okay, out here, by yourself?”

“Of course dearie, though you’re sweet to worry!! Though, not many people visit old Madame Razz anymore. Can’t see the stars…” The “pie” she was making was finished in a pan and shoved in the oven.

“Stars?” Adora said, brows furrowed. “What’s ‘stars’ ?” 

“Oh, so silly Mara! Of course you know the stars. The words in the sky!” Madame Razz sighed then, her face losing some of its brightness, and mumbled something Adora couldn't hear. 

“Ooookay.” Adora shook her head and asked, “But, what I mean is, do you know what happened? Are you all alone here?”

Razz looked at her in confusion, before brightening. “OF COURSE I’m not alone!! I have Lookie!” She gestured to exactly nothing. “Always hiding, always hiding..”

Adora reached out, face frozen in an expression of worry.  _ So annoying, Catra would have said, if she saw her looking like that. _ Gently, she placed a hand on the old lady’s arm. “Ah, Madame Razz… The heart ruptured. Magic took over, and the plants, they.. A lot of people died. Nothing is safe anymore.” 

Razz’s abnormally enlarged eyes took on a glossy sheen. “Oh Mara,” she said, looking up at Adora. “You tried.” She patted Adora’s hand on her arm with a tenderness that made Adora’s heart squeeze in her chest.

“What, Who? No, I— did you hear anything I just said?”

The old woman stared off into the distance and didn’t reply. Her arm slipped out of Adora’s grasp.

Distantly, Adora thought she heard someone calling her name. Then, she heard it again. Was Catra out looking for her? How long had she been gone? She hadn’t scavenged anything. 

Suddenly, Madame Razz jerked to alertness, startling Adora. With surprising strength, she took Adora's arms and shoved her forcefully out the curtain door of her home. Distantly, she heard “Lookie says danger.”

“Adora?” Footsteps behind her, and then she felt a hand fall to her shoulder and turn her around. “Found you. Are you okay?”

Catra. She was dressed in a red sleeveless outfit they’d scavenged off the coast of Salineas. Her mismatched eyes were uncharacteristically soft, her tail hovering still just over the dirt. “Hey, what happened?” 

Adora snapped out of it.”How long was I gone?”

“Four hours. You’re usually back in two.”

“Aww, you care.” But the joke fell flat, and Adora's smile didn’t reach her eyes. 

“Well,” Catra huffed. “Did you at least scavenge anything good?” She grabbed at Adora’s sack, a patched bag made of old shirts held together by stubbornness and truly subpar sewing. She shook it out, finding exactly nothing. “Nothing?!” She exclaimed, her voice squeaking slightly. 

“I found some pickles, but they had mold.” Catra made a face at the mention of pickles. 

“There's literally like, twenty other houses in this district, I guarantee you you could find one without moldy food.”

Adora sighed. Catra, while overly generous with the estimation of houses in this area, was right. She had gotten terribly sidetracked, and it’d probably hurt them in the near future. 

Catra’s tail twitched, and her pupils shrank as she peered curiously over Adora’s shoulder at the lit door.

“Hey, whats—”

Suddenly, the humming all around them reached a crescendo pitch. Catra’s ears flattened to her head, and she took off, sprinting. Her grip on Adora’s arm nearly yanked her shoulder out of its socket. A geyser. They had seconds to get more than fifty feet away, or the boiling mud would kill them, if the magic didn’t get to them first. Adora thought she heard a faint, “Go!” Before a column of blinding yellow light erupted right in the middle of Madame Razz’s house, sending earth flying. 

Adora released Catra’s grip on her arm and kept running. Somehow, this elderly woman, who lived all alone in an empty village, who Adora had thought was ignorant and naive… Somehow, she had saved her life.

Later, Catra tenderly wrapped the burn Adora had gotten on her right leg. It was nothing serious, just geyser dirt she had kicked up after it had already hit the ground. 

Geysers were one of the many and worst hazards of their new world. They were totally unpredictable and appeared with almost no warning. You could melt under the flying lava-like dirt, or, if you were caught directly in the blast of pure magic, you would turn into nothing at all. The heart had let out most of its magic through that first, terrible breach, but these were the painful leftovers. And they showed no signs of stopping or slowing down. 

Last gifts from the ancient power that had pooled magic at the center of the planet for a millennium.

Catra looked up at her as she tucked in the end of the bandage. “Slowpoke,” she teased, but her tone was soft. 

Before the heart ruptured, they’d been… something. Wards of an imperialistic army, companions in arms… childhood best friends. Now what they had was deeper and closer, and Adora didn’t have a name for it, but she knew that catra meant everything and more to her. 

“Hey,” Catra tapped her forehead, slightly less gentle. “There's a lot going on up there. You wanna tell me what happened?” 

“I..” Adora hesitated. She almost didn’t have the words. “I met someone today. Someone new. And they were… Really weird, actually.”

“What was their name?”

“Uh, Madame Razz?”

“Madame Razz. Seriously?” 

“Yeah, and she, well, she pushed me out of the house before the geyser hit. Before you got there.”

“What, like she saw it coming? There is no way-”

“But she did!! And she got me far enough away so we could run.”

“Adora, there’s no way she could have predicted that. Maybe she just wanted you out of her house. It was just luck.” Catra sighed, clawed hand curling over Adora's cheek, and said more gently, “It wasn’t your fault. There wasn’t anything you could do.” 

Adora shrugged uncomfortably, and Catra stood and went over to sort through their meager ration supply. She knew Catra had a lot to say about her so-called “hero complex” but she couldn’t help but think… The number of people they’d known were alive had gone up to three, and now it was back to two.

After kissing Catra goodnight, Adora laid awake, the catgirl curled against her side. She stared at what dark, empty sky could be seen between the cracks of their lean-to. Mara… Did she recognize that name? Mara, Mara Mara…

They woke to the ground shaking. A high pitched ringing hung in the air, signaling another geyser had erupted close by. Not  _ too _ close, but closer than was comfortable. 

Catra hissed. Her nails were dug into her arms, hands crossed against her chest. All of her fur stood on end. “We have  _ got  _ to move camp.”

Adora nodded her agreement. The shaking (and Catra flinching violently as a result) had startled her onto her feet. She stood for a few seconds, still getting her bearings after being yanked awake. The weather wasn’t cold, but she shivered. 

“Well? What are you waiting for?” Catra snapped. She shouldered past her to gather up their few belongings. 

Adora bit back a response, and wordlessly helped pack up their small camp. Once all of their things were in or tied onto something that could be carried, She heard a sigh from beside her. A hand tilted her chin upwards, but she kept her gaze on the floor.

“Look, I just.. You mean a lot to me okay? And I worry— I guess, I just want us out of here.”

Adora looked up.

“I’m sorry for snapping.”

Adora rubbed a hand over her face, though her lips were now upturned in a small smile. “I know. Thanks. I just...”

She knew, that she tended to take things too personally, that Catra was just trying to show her care as best she could, as best as she’d been  _ taught  _ to. She knew it wasn’t meant to feel like a slap to the face. Sometimes, it just felt like all her feelings and everything, all her effort, was only hitting a wall. She was too used to offering everything and getting nothing back. But that’s not what it was anymore. 

They were both here. They were both trying.

“I know,” Catra replied. “So, where should we go?” 

“North?”

“If you say so.”

She offered a hand, and Adora took it. They were both still a little shaky on their feet, but they started in on their hike. (Neither Adora’s scavenging or Catra’s attempts at fixing up some of their old junk had produced a vehicle, so they traveled on foot). 

A few hours in, they entered a dense forest not far from Thaymor. Catra hadn't liked the idea of sleeping under so many trees at all, but Adora pointed out that if they didn’t find another village or dwelling, it would be better if they had some cover.

Though, she was liking her plan less and less the farther they got.

“Adora?”

“Yeah?”

“I think these are the whispering woods.”

Adora stopped, all the blood draining from her face. The humming was more intense here, more concentrated, and she could almost make out the sound of voices, coming from the foliage of the trees…

“Well,” she said slowly, “this was a bad idea.” Her voice was slightly higher than normal, eyes darting from treetop to treetop. They’d heard stories about these woods, and the monsters that lay within… Things that could only have gotten worse after the heart ruptured. A terrifying thought. 

“It’ll be fine, we just need to find someplace where the trees aren’t so dense,” Catra replied, though she didn't look much better. Her eyes were wide and scared and her ears were back. Her tail flicked restlessly. The woods seem to close around them tighter at her words.

“Right!” Adora said overenthusiastically, voice cracking, and continued forward. Catra followed close behind.

Miraculously, after a little more hiking, the woods became more spread out and they reached a break in the treeline. The moons hung low in the sky, illuminating a clearing with an odd crystalline structure. It was several meters tall and in utter disrepair, the pointed roof tilting and caving in in places. 

“Well that’s… interesting,” Adora said at the sight.

“One way to put it,” Catra said. She walked up and kicked it experimentally. “Structurally sound at least. Maybe it was some kind of temple. I think I saw something about those somewhere.” 

“Huh,” Adora said in way of reply.

They put their backs to the building and ate ration bars and some bits of dried fish, shoulders pressed together. When night finally fell, the two curled up on the ground beside the forgotten temple, using Adora’s jacket as a blanket and each other as pillows, falling to a restless and dream-filled sleep.

“Adora. Hey, Adora!” 

“Huh, wha?” 

Adora sat up groggily. Most of her hair was squashed to one side of her head, and she was pretty sure she was drooling. Her eyes had yet to focus.

“That’s a good look on you,” Catra giggled. It was a rare enough sound these days that it woke Adora up enough to smile. Her vision cleared to Catra standing over her. “But you should really come take a look at this.”

“This,” was the largest moss/plant/weed mound Adora had ever seen. It was about the size of a large bed, with a tall mossy base and grass and wildflowers growing abundantly at the top. A few vines climbed from it to the nearby trees. 

Neither of them knew what to think of it. “What is it?” Adora asked hesitantly. 

Catra shrugged, and lightly kicked at the base, A large clump of moss rolled free.

Adora tensed, her breathing turned shallow, expecting to see a head or a foot of some poor dead Etherian. But the clump of moss was green and brown all the way through, with no signs of anything other than plant material.

Catra noticed Adora’s expression and drew back sheepishly. “Sorry. Looks like everything’s okay though.” She walked up to another side of the mound and gingerly pushed at some wildflowers. “Weird…” 

Suddenly, she scrambled back and fell to the ground with a  _ thump. _ “NO!! NOPE, I WAS WRONG,” 

Adora jogged over quickly, turning to see what had scared Catra so badly. 

“Wait! Adora, don’t!” 

She stared down. There was an unmistakable human face showing in between the flowers. It was still half-covered in moss, showing only a nose, lips, and one closed eye. Adora heard some part of herself screaming. She hoped it wasn’t the outside part. After a minute of feeling all the blood in her body turn to ice and at least two of her internal organs shut down, she noticed something. Brows furrowed, she leaned in closer.

“OH MY GOD, ARE YOU GETTING CLOSER TO IT?? ADORA!” 

“It’s alive!” Adora shouted. The ice in her veins was being replaced with adrenaline. “They’re alive! Look, their skin is pink and I can see them breathing!”

Slowly, Catra got to her feet and edged forward. She looked cautiously over Adora’s shoulder. “Holy shit,” she breathed. 

Adora began to paw at the moss excitedly, uncovering another quarter of the person’s face. A lock of blonde hair slipped out, tinged green. 

Just as Adora began to scrape away the moss on their left eye, the person sat up with a haunting wheeze. Their eyes flew open, and they leaned over and coughed out a leaf. 

Adora stared, her mouth hanging open, from where she’d flung herself to the ground in surprise. Catra looked ready to fight, leaning toward the mystery person with fangs and claws bared, but her arms shook ever so slightly.

The person coughed and retched, spitting out a whole clump of roots. Green saliva colored the corners of their mouth. 

Adora thought she saw daisies unfurling and blooming in the waves of her hair. She was hallucinating. She had to be, because otherwise-

This person was magic.

Not bothering to hide her fear, Adora asked into the uneasy disquiet, “Who… are you?

The person turned toward the sound of her voice, wiping their lips. Their skin was a warm brown, pink touching their cheeks and mouth. Their dark eyes regarded them impassively, betraying neither intent nor emotion.

They smiled. 

“Oh, um I’m sorry, do I know you? My name is Perfuma.” 

Silence. 

“I’m  _ so _ sorry, I’m a bit confused, could you perhaps, tell me where I am?”

“How did you survive the plants?” Catra snapped.

“The plants?” Perfuma smiled again, and Catra recoiled.

_ “Yes, _ the plants,” She hissed. 

“Well, ah, I guess you could say they’re my— wait did you say survived? Is someone hurt?” Their face turned plaintive, dark eyes clouded with concern. They reached out, mouth open as if to say something else, but the ground began to rumble.

Vines burst from the earth, humming with magic. They cascaded over Perfuma in neon blooms, stems swelling to bars as thick as tree trunks. In seconds, Perfuma was trapped in a vegetative cage, voice high and panicked as she babbled “I don't understand, this shouldn’t be happening, I can’t control them, I—” 

Her voice became inaudible as the ground shook. Giving up her defensive stance, Catra yanked Adora back by the collar of her shirt, stumbling backward as quickly as she could. They joined hands and started running.

The rumbling faded into the distance behind them, but the pitch of the air intensified. They didn’t hear the geyser go off, and they didn't look back.

After half an hour of being whipped in the face by branches and tripping on roots, Adora squeezed Catra’s hand. 

“Please,” she said, voice ragged. 

They slowed to a stop, Adora leaning down to grasp her knees and take gulping breaths. Before this, she’d been able to run their mile and a half obstacle course without breaking a sweat, but stress and lack of food had taken its toll on her body. 

Catra wasn’t much better, wheezing shakily as she studied the horizon. She came to a realization that stole what oxygen she’d been able to gather right from her lungs.

“Adora,” she said softly.

When the girl didn’t respond, she tapped at her shoulder, gentle but insistent.

Adora lifted her head and looked.

They had reached the edge of the woods, trees petering out into stretches of grass. But the grass ended meters away from where they were standing.

The land was scarred and coated in rubble as far as they could see. The sky was bleak and gray, swirling with storm clouds, but absent in its usual lightning. The ruins covered the earth, even the super-charged magical plants having failed to grow. Instead, the site leached life and energy, until all that remained was dark as coal.

“Is it…” Adora murmured. 

“The Fright Zone.” Catra replied, voice cracking. 

For so long they’d been able to fantasize that they weren’t the only ones. They stayed away, only running farther and farther from their home in the name of all the bad things that had happened to them there. Never admitting it was also because they were scared of what they might find if they went back.

Now, they felt those daydreams slip away as they were confronted with their only home turned to ash. Lonnie, Kyle, Rogelio, all the cadets, all the friends they’d hoped were out there, had been truly lost to them. Forever. In the starkness of the nothing before them, no one could have survived.

A tear trailed down Adora’s cheek and fell off her chin. Catra made no attempt to comfort her, standing stock still and rigid. Just…. willing herself together, fighting with every ounce not to let the cracks break her apart.

“It’s… really gone,” Adora said, wiping her face. It had gotten so dusty and scratched from the trees that the tears had left a perfect path of clean skin amongst the grime. 

“We have to go back.”

“No,” Catra snapped immediately, then took a breath to calm herself. “No, we can’t go back in the woods. There was a geyser, and plants, and who knows what is waiting for us in there.

“We’ll have to go through.”

Adora sighed uneasily but got to her feet.

“Okay. Okay,” she agreed. 

Without making eye contact, Catra offered her hand again. Adora took it, and they started forward.

“Don’t look down,” Catra said quickly. “In case there’s…”

Bodies.

Adora nodded sharply. Her gaze was trained resolutely ahead.

Together they stepped over charred ground and cement beams until their shoes were coated in a fine layer of soot.

Suddenly, Catra was tackled sideways, sending her sprawling. She struggled to get to her feet, but Adora’s weight kept her pressed insistently into the dust. Fifty feet away, a geyser burst upwards, white and blinding. 

When the light had faded and the dirt had stopped raining, Adora rolled over and they both stood. Catra stared in shock at the smoking crater. 

“But it— it didn’t make any sound, it—” she turned to Adora. “How did you know?” 

Adora shrugged. “I must have heard something.”

But without saying anything, they both knew it was a lie. Catra’s ears, and all her senses, were much, much better than Adora’s. And she had heard nothing.

The rules had changed.

“We’ll have to keep moving,” Catra said. She stepped forward, her walk breaking into a slow jog. Adora kept pace as they anxiously continued through the Fright Zone.

Another geyser lit up the darkness closer, 20 feet away, and they had to duck and sprint to avoid the boiling clods of mud. They hissed as remnants stung their scalps and necks, but kept moving. 

One of Catra’s hands was holding tight to Adora’s arm, pulling her forward. They dodged two more geysers, leaping over pylons, and Catra saw blue sky in the distance.

“Adora!”

Adora reached for her, but not quick enough. Catra pushed her forward with all her strength.

Then she fell.

The geyser burst to life right behind her, searing the fur on her tail.

“CATRA!” Adora screamed, the sound dissipating into a cacophony of ringing.

Before the light had cleared, Adora was running back for her. Her legs ached with the strain, and her stomach churned.

She found Catra lying still on the warm ground. She was speckled with globs of earth all over her body, half shrouded in steam. Her clothing was in tatters and her left pant leg was on fire. Her breath came in shaky, hesitant rattles, each farther apart from the last.

The smell of burning hair filled Adora’s nose.

She wiped away what she could with gritted teeth, her own hands burning, growing red and blistered. Then, placing her red jacket underneath her, she began to drag Catra carefully from the wasteland behind them. Every part of her being was on fire, and she glowed a soft yellow in the artificial night, trudging insistently toward the clear horizon.

Later, she’ll arrive at a half-known land where nobody has lived for a year.

She’ll build a lean-to shelter by the coast, decorating it with their few belongings, and sleep on the floor (they couldn’t bring their mattress) curled against Catra to keep her warm and safe. 

She’ll make a pile of their bandages and clean cloth, and wrap her hands quickly before giving all the rest of their medicine to Catra. 

She’ll hold Catra’s head and sing when the moons glow through their new ceiling, even though Catra’s the one that can carry a tune and her voice is the equivalent of a piano that’s broken and off-key. 

And, when Catra finally opens her eyes again, smiling through the pain and the bandages that cover over half her body, she’ll whisper in sweet tones all the things she likes about her because she doesn’t know the stronger word. 

And she knows that they’re running out of time, but maybe, just maybe, they can be okay, just for now. 

\- end -

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> "And I could get through world war three  
> as long as you were there with me.  
> Nowhere else I'd rather be  
> when the world falls into anarchy."
> 
> fic title is from Anarchy by Egg, which I highly recommend.
> 
> If anyone's reading this, hi!! Please, by all means leave me questions and comments about this storyline. I had a lot of fun incorporating elements from canon and giving them my own weird explanations. Also, let me know if you want to see a sequel to this with Scorpia as the Prince Charming to Perfuma's Sleeping Beauty/Rapunzel! Either way, I'll probably write more within this au :)


End file.
